Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introducing pragmatics
- 2 Toward an elaborated model of language: speech-act theory and conversational analysis
- 3 Language use and social functioning
- 4 Methods of research
- 5 Evidence on language use
- 6 Interdependence of social cognition and communication
- 7 Implications and applications
- Appendix 1
- Appendix 2
- Notes
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
1 - Introducing pragmatics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introducing pragmatics
- 2 Toward an elaborated model of language: speech-act theory and conversational analysis
- 3 Language use and social functioning
- 4 Methods of research
- 5 Evidence on language use
- 6 Interdependence of social cognition and communication
- 7 Implications and applications
- Appendix 1
- Appendix 2
- Notes
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Communication through the use of language is perhaps the most distinctive of human social activities. It is certainly one of the most critical. Language provides the medium through which communities are realized and reproduced through time. Whereas individuals may experience the world privately and thus construct personal definitions, their social interaction forces them to accommodate to a public and shared frame of reference. In order to ensure that one's own action is properly recognized by another and thus is likely to have its intended effect, an individual must act in accordance with rules linking intention, action and effects which are also recognized by others. It is in this public domain, this arena of commonly recognized rules, that the values, understandings and regulations of action characteristic of a community are expressed. Nowhere does this expression receive greater elaboration or clarity than in language.
Guided by a desire to better understand social life, philosophers and social scientists have focused on two questions: What does it mean for an individual to be a member of a social group? What is involved in becoming a member of such a group? Within a linguistic frame of reference these two questions may be recast as follows: What does it mean to be a competent communicator, a competent user of language? What is involved in acquiring this competence? My aim in this book is to contribute to the attempt to provide answers to these questions.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Conversational Competence and Social Development , pp. 1 - 8Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990